Consequence should be what you get from your choice not what Larian scripts it to be.
My brother in Mystra, every outcome of every choice is scripted by Larian. What is this supposed to mean?
You have no idea that she will be kidnapped before Marcus turns up and once he arrives and you find out he wants to take her you do not know that the game is rigged for her to go down easily and then a cutscene will kick in. You also have no idea that the barrier will collapse immediately if Isobel is so much as unconscious. Nor do you have any inkling that everyone will turn into zombies the instant the barrier collapses.
As the OP said at the start, the actual fight isn't the problem so providing your 20-20 hindsight tactics aren't to the point. Like a lot of people I walked into this fight and got caught completely off-balance. I lost Isobel but defeated all the zombies easily enough. I rolled back and did the fight again and Marcus didn't last two minutes.
The game doesn't explain why Thorm's long dead daughter is an alive and well priestess of Selune. Nor does it explain why you later meet her again as an undead at Thorm's side.
Yes it does - it is a main narrative point throughout the entire Act and there is a ton of dialogue explicitly mentioning who Isobel is, how she died, and how/why she was raised. How you missed the entire narrative of Act 2 is crazy.
The writing in this game is piss poor - it's the same looooooooooow standard as the crap that Rings of Power managed and that Wheels of Time is currently managing.
Translated as - "I skipped or misunderstood everything going on so the writing is bad!"
